Henry David Thoreau is most famous for a book he wrote about building a cabin near a pond in the woods. In fact, we just celebrated the 180th anniversary of his move-in day: July 4, 1845.
However, he also had some things to say about bigger structures – the pyramids in Egypt – and the people who built them.
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| Thoreau's cabin: $28.12 |
For the United States in the 21st century, I do not think of any grand structures. I do not think of ambitious public works. We do not seem to build those now. One could say the iconic works of this century are corporations rather than structures.
In 2018, Apple became the first corporation with a valuation of a trillion dollars. Now several companies surpass that amount, including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla.
Some of these entities are involved in the lives of possibly every American, especially
inside the technology that we use daily. As the Orange King says, “Everything
is computer!” I will focus on Amazon, though. Not everyone shops on Amazon, but
everyone knows its logo and sees its delivery trucks each day.
When people think of the United States in the 21st century, they
might think of these corporations as its greatest accomplishment, and the
leaders of these corporations might be considered its leading citizens. In
fact, several of them were on stage during the coronation of the Orange King.
In a past era they would have been called “titans of industry.” Author Thomas
Wolfe might have called them “Masters of the Universe,” which is phrase from
his novel Bonfire of the Vanities; it is a name for the men who steer
the nation’s money and influence the nation’s fate -- and who are known for their
extravagant lifestyles.
Thoreau would be disappointed in this lionizing of wealth-hoarders and what
they have built. Thoreau asked people to evaluate the greatness of a
civilization by the standard of living for its regular people rather than the achievements
of its elites.
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| One of Bezos's yachts: $400 million |
I agree with him.
In the first chapter of Walden, Thoreau writes that the workers who
built the pyramids “were not decently buried themselves.” He suggests a mason in
another era who “finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance
to a hut…” He writes, “It certainly is
fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish the
generation are accomplished.”
Much of Thoreau’s first chapter is devoted to asking why people spend their lives working rather than living. He questions the lifestyles people choose (or have forced upon them) that require so much labor. Returning to the topic of pyramids, he suggests the laborers had better things to do with their lives – like living them. In fact, rather than ask how could people build such marvelous structures, he asks why would people build them at all? In the second chapter of Walden, he writes:
“As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.”
I suspect Bezos, an ambitious booby himself, would disagree with this sentiment. After all, he famously said he wanted his thousands of Amazon employees to “wake up every morning terrified” of not pleasing their customers. Bezos believes his company is worth the sacrifice of its workers’ lives and happiness.
Thoreau would judge American civilization not by the valuation of Amazon’s stock and Bezos’s wealth, but by whether his employees were treated well and felt their lives were being spent wisely.
Far from urging people to wake up terrified in sheets drenched in sweat, Thoreau urges his readers to be awakened by their “aspirations from within” rather than from without, by an alarm clock or “factory bells.” He urges us to awake in the morning “to a higher life than we fell asleep from.”
Again, I agree with him.
